Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Below is the same perspective taken in April of 2010. Much is the same, but several buildings have been added to Park since 1957. The Waldorf=Astoria still reigns on Park as the monarch of New York City hotels and can still be seen in the modern view (a stay there is unforgettable).

Here's Hope Lange on Park Avenue arriving for her first day of work in the Seagram Building (out of shot to the right) in the opening scenes of 1959's The Best of Everything. Don't get your hopes (ahem) up; the on-location New York footage is beautiful in Cinemascope, including aerial footage accompanied by Johnny Mathis during the opening credits, but disappointingly brief. Most of the film was shot on soundstages in Hollywood. There are several dramatic shots of the building, though, plus other NY street scenes with the cars, the clothes and all that other good stuff.

One person sees a scene from "Pillow Talk." Another - specifically me - sees the title sequence and opening scenes from "North By Northwest" - the calm before all of the sinister doings. Oddly enough though, most of the sinister stuff occurs not in the cities - New York and Chicago - but in rural areas like the Long Island estate, the corn field near Chicago and Mount Rushmore. The cities are safe. It's being in the countryside that will kill you.

Was my first visit to the Four Seasons bar. What an elegant place! The Seagram Building itself made quite an impression, too. It and Lever House seemed like they had been dropped from another planet. Such a change from those sooty, clam-colored mausoleums that had been the fashion in skyscrapers. It has aged remarkably well.

that make me so thankful for your wonderful site. I've never visited a big city before, so I always get a bit giddy when I find photos that really make me feel like I'm there. Coupled with the fact this one is from 1957, I'm walking on sunshine. Thanks Dave!

Directly behind the Seagram Building, the tall profile of the Waldorf-Astoria, still New York City's most quietly elegant big hotel. And right behind the ornate building straddling Park Avenue in the distance would be Grand Central Terminal, one of those crossroads of the world where, if you stood there long enough, you would probably see almost everyone you ever knew. One of my favorite six- or seven-block stretches of Midtown.

I've got to say as someone who used to work near the Seagram Building, I can never see what the heck is so special about it. It always simply struck me as the first of those awful soulless glass boxes which diminished the New Yorkness of New York. Give me an Art Deco tower anyday!!

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.